scene, in order to prove that the pandours, as well as the regular forces of the ghostly world, were alike under his command : "By the light of the fire he saw a pale, weazen-faced fellow, in a long flannel gown, and a tall white night-cap with a tassel to it, who sat by the fire with a bellows under his arm by the way of bagpipe, from which he forced the asthmatical music that had bothered my grandfather. As he played, too, he kept twitching about with a thousand queer contortions, nodding his head, and bobbing about his tasselled night-cap. "From the opposite side of the room, a long-backed, bandy-legged chair, covered with leather, and studded all over in a coxcombical fashion with little brass nails, got suddenly into motion, thrust out first a claw-foot, then a crooked arm, and at length making a leg, slided gracefully up to an easy-chair of tarnished brocade, with a hole in its bottom, and led it gallantly out in a ghostly minuet about the floor. "The musician now played fiercer and fiercer, and bobbed his head and his night-cap about like mad. By degrees, the dancing mania seemed to seize upon all the other pieces of furniture. The antique long-bodied chairs paired off in couples and led down a country-dance; a three-legged stool danced a hornpipe, though horribly puzzled by its supernumerary leg; while the amorous tongs seized the shovel round the waist, and whirled it about the room in a German waltz. In short, all the moveables got in motion, pirouetting, hands across, right and left, like so many devils: all except a great clothes-press, which kept curtseying and curtseying in a corner like a dowager, in exquisite time to the music; being rather too corpulent to dance, or, perhaps, at a loss for a partner." * This slight sketch, from the hand of a master, is all that we possess in England corresponding to the Fantastic style of composition which we are now treating of. "Peter Schlemil," "The Devil's Elixir," and other German works of the same character, have made it known to us through the medium of translation. The author who led the way in this department of literature was Ernest Theodore William Hoffmann ; the peculiarity of whose genius, temper, and habits, fitted him to distinguish himself where imagination was to be strained to the pitch of oddity and bizarrerie. He appears to have been a man of rare talent, -a poet, an artist, and a musician, but unhappily of a hypochondriac and whimsical disposition, which carried him to extremes in all his undertakings; so his music became capricious,—his drawings caricatures,—and his tales, as he himself termed them, fantastic extravagances. Bred originally to the law, he at different times enjoyed, under the Prussian and other governments, the small appointments of a subordinate magistrate; at other times he was left entirely to his own exertions, and supported himself as a musical composer for the stage, * Tales of a Traveller, by Washington Irving. T as an author, or as a draughtsman. The shifts, the uncertainty, the precarious nature of this kind of existence, had its effect, doubtless, upon a mind which nature had rendered peculiarly susceptible of elation and depression; and a temper, in itself variable, was rendered more so by frequent change of place and of occupation, as well as by the uncertainty of his affairs. He cherished his fantastic genius also with wine in considerable quantity, and indulged liberally in the use of tobacco. Even his outward appearance bespoke the state of his nervous system: a very little man with a quantity of dark-brown hair, and eyes looking through his elf-locks, that "E'en like grey goss-hawk's stared wild,” indicated that touch of mental derangement, of which he seems to have been himself conscious, when entering the following fearful memorandum in his diary : “Why, in sleeping and in waking, do I, in my thoughts, dwell upon the subject of insanity? The out-pouring of the wild ideas that arise in my mind may perhaps operate like the breathing of a vein." 66 Circumstances arose also in the course of Hoffmann's unsettled and wandering life, which seemed to his own apprehension to mark him as one who was not in the roll of common men." These circumstances had not so much of the extraordinary as his fancy attributed to them. For example; he was present at deep play in a watering-place, in company with a friend, who was desirous to venture for some of the gold which lay upon the table. Betwixt hope of gain and fear of loss, distrusting at the same time his own luck, he at length thrust into Hoffmann's hand six gold pieces, and requested him to stake for him. Fortune was propitious to the young visionary, though he was totally inexperienced in the game, and he gained for his friend about thirty Fredericks d'or. The next evening Hoffmann resolved to try fortune on his own account. This purpose, he remarks, was not a previous determination, but one which was suddenly suggested by a request of his friend to undertake the charge of staking a second time on his behalf. He advanced to the table on his own account, and deposited on one of the cards the only two Fredericks d'or of which he was possessed. If Hoffmann's luck had been remarkable on the former occasion, it now seemed as if some supernatural power stood in alliance with him. Every attempt which he made succeeded-every card turned up propitiously. "My senses," he says, "became unmanageable, and as more and more gold streamed in upon me, it seemed as I were in a dream, out of which I only awaked to pocket the money. The play was given up, as is usual, at two in the morning. In the moment when I was about to leave the room, an old officer laid his hand upon my shoulder, and re garding me with a fixed and severe look, said: 'Young man, if you understand this business so well, the bank, which maintains free table, is ruined; but if you do so understand the game, reckon upon it securely that the devil will be as sure of you as of all the rest of them.' Without waiting an answer, he turned away. The morning was dawning when I came home, and emptied from every pocket heaps of gold on the table. Imagine the feelings of a lad in a state of absolute dependance, and restricted to a small sum of pocket-money, who finds himself, as if by a thunderclap, placed in possession of a sum enough to be esteemed absolute wealth, at least for the moment! But while I gazed on the treasure, my state of mind was entirely changed by a sudden and singular agony so severe, as to force the cold sweat-drops from my brow. The words of the old officer now, for the first time, rushed upon my mind in their fullest and most terrible acceptation. It seemed to me as if the gold, which glittered upon the table, was the earnest of a bargain by which the Prince of Darkness had obtained possession of my soul, which never more could escape eternal destruction. It seemed as if some poisonous reptile was sucking my heart's blood, and I felt myself fall into an abyss of despair." Then the ruddy dawn began to gleam through the window, wood and plain were illuminated by its beams, and the visionary begun to experience the blessed feeling of returning strength, to combat with temptations, and to protect himself against the infernal propensity, which must have been attended with total destruction. Under the influence of such feelings Hoffmann formed a vow never again to touch a card, which he kept till the end of his life. "The lesson of the officer," says Hoffmann, was good, and its effect excellent." But the peculiar disposition of Hoffmann made it work upon his mind more like an empiric's remedy than that of a regular physician. He renounced play less from the conviction of the wretched moral consequences of such a habit, than because he was actually afraid of the Evil Spirit in person. 66 In another part of his life Hoffmann had occasion to show, that his singularly wild and inflated fancy was not accessible to that degree of timidity connected with insanity, and to which poets, as being of " imagination all compact," are sometimes supposed to be peculiarly accessible. The author was in Dresden during the eventful period when the city was nearly taken by the allies, but preserved by the sudden return of Buonaparte and his guards from the frontiers of Silesia. He then saw the work of war closely carried on, venturing within fifty paces of the French sharp-shooters while skirmishing with those of the allies in front of Dresden. He had experience of a bombardment: one of the shells exploding before the house in which Hoffmann and Keller, the comedian, with bumpers in their hands to keep up their spirits, watched the progress of the attack from an upper window. The explosion killed three persons; Keller let his glass fall,—Hoffmann had more philosophy; he tossed off his bumper and moralized: "What is life!" said he," and how frail the human frame that cannot withstand a splinter of heated iron!" He saw the field of battle when they were cramming with naked corpses the immense fosses which form the soldier's grave; the field covered with the dead and the wounded,—with horses and men ; powder-waggons which had exploded, broken weapons, schakos, sabres, cartridge-boxes, and all the relics of a desperate fight. He saw, too, Napoleon in the midst of his triumph, and heard him ejaculate to an adjutant, with the look and the deep voice of the lion, the single word "Voyons." It is much to be regretted that Hoffmann preserved but few memoranda of the eventful weeks which he spent at Dresden during this period, and of which his turn for remark and powerful description would have enabled him to give so accurate a picture. In general, it may be remarked of descriptions concerning warlike affairs, that they resemble plans rather than paintings; and that, however calculated to instruct the tactician, they are little qualified to interest the general reader. A soldier, particularly, if interrogated upon the actions which he has seen, is much more disposed to tell them in the dry and abstracted style of a gazette, than to adorn them with the remarkable and picturesque circumstances which attract the general ear. This arises from the natural feeling, that, in speaking of what they have witnessed in any other than a dry and affected professional tone, they may be suspected of a desire to exaggerate their own dangers,—a suspicion which, of all others, a brave man is most afraid of incurring, and which, besides, the present spirit of the military profession holds as amounting to bad taste. It is, therefore, peculiarly unfortunate, that when a person unconnected with the trade of war, yet well qualified to describe its terrible peculiarities, chances to witness events so remarkable as those to which Dresden was exposed in the memorable 1813, he should not have made a register of what could not have failed to be deeply interesting. The battle of Leipsic, which ensued shortly after, as given to the public by an eye-witness-M. Shoberl, if we recollect the name aright—is an example of what we might have expected from ̧ a person of Hoffmann's talents, giving an account of his personal experience respecting the dreadful events which he witnessed. We could willingly have spared some of his grotesque works of diablerie, if we had been furnished, in their place, with the genuine description of the attack upon and the retreat from Dresden, by the allied army, in the month of August, 1813. It was the last decisive advantage which was obtained by Napoleon, and being rapidly succeeded by the defeat of Vandamme, and the loss of his whole corps d'armée, was the point from which his visible declension might be correctly dated. Hoffmann was also a high-spirited patriot,-a true, honest, thorough-bred German, who had set his heart upon the liberation of his country, and would have narrated with genuine feeling the advantages which she obtained over her oppressor. It was not, however, his fortune to attempt any work, however slight, of an historical character, and the retreat of the French army soon left him to his usual habits of literary industry and convivial enjoyment. It may, however, be supposed, that an imagination which was always upon the stretch received a new impulse from the scenes of difficulty and danger through which our author had so lately passed. Another calamity of a domestic nature must also have tended to the increase of Hoffmann's morbid sensibility. During a journey in a public carriage, it chanced to be overturned, and the author's wife sustained a formidable injury on the head, by which she was a sufferer for a length of time. All these circumstances, joined to the natural nervousness of his own temper, tended to throw Hoffmann into a state of mind very favourable, perhaps, to the attainment of success in his own peculiar mode of composition, but far from being such as could consist with that right and well-balanced state of human existence, in which philosophers have been disposed to rest the attainment of the highest possible degree of human happiness. Nerves which are accessible to that morbid degree of acuteness, by which the mind is incited, not only without the consent of our reason, but even contrary to its dictates, fall under the condition deprecated in the beautiful Ode to Indifference : "Nor peace, nor joy, the heart can know, Which, like the needle, true, Turns at the touch of joy or woe, The pain which in one case is inflicted by an undue degree of bodily sensitiveness, is in the other the consequence of our own excited imagination; nor is it easy to determine in which the penalty of too much acuteness or vividness of perception is most severely exacted. The nerves of Hoffmann in particular were strung to the most painful pitch which can be supposed. A severe nervous fever, about the year 1807, had greatly increased the fatal sensibility under which he laboured, which acting primarily on the body speedily affected the mind. He had himself noted a sort of graduated scale concerning the state of his imagination, which, like that of a thermometer, indicated the exaltation of his feelings up to a state not far distant, probably, from that of actual mental derangement. It is not, perhaps, easy to find expressions corresponding in English to the peculiar words under which Hoffmann classified his perceptions: but we may observe that he records, as the humour of one day, a deep disposition towards the romantic and religious; of a second, the perception of the exalted or excited humor |